In case you missed it, you can now purchase your very own “.xxx” web address.
On Tuesday, web addresses under the newest and raciest specific top-level domain went on sale to the general public for $79 and up, depending on which of the 64 authorized registar companies you buy from. You can check the availability of such web addresses, and all of the authorized companies here (SFW).
In the first day alone, some 55,367 new domains were registered, according to the new domain’s Twitter account.
Meant to help categorize adult entertainment websites (i.e. pornography), the new dot xxx domain is the culmination of a topsy-turvy 11-year-struggle between the registry operator company that first proposed the domain, ICM Registry, and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the nonprofit American organization that manages the domain name system for the entire World Wide Web.
“.XXX isn’t just a helpful distinction,” reads ICM Registry’s website. “It’s the progressive new home for adult entertainment online.”
Florida-based ICM Registry already sold over 100,000 .xxx domains in earlier, non-public sales, the BCC reported. The company expects to earn $200 million a year in sales, eventually offloading between 3 and 5 million domains, Bloomberg reported earlier.
After repeatedly going back and forth on ICM Registry’s original request for basically every reason under the sun — from technical reasons to concerns over editing for content to potential censorship based on the domain — ICANN in March finally approved the plan to roll out the new domain.
But that plan involved a
Of course, the domain itself remains controversial, and not only to groups concerned about morality and the safety of women and children, though that criticism is as good as any a place to start.
“The establishment of a .XXX Domain will increase not decrease the spread of Internet pornography,” said Patrick A. Trueman, President of Morality in Media and former chief of the U.S. Department of Justice Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, UCaNews reported.
Back in 2005 the U.S. Department of Commerce under the Bush Administration even pressured ICANN not to approve the domain after receiving complaints from individuals concerned about “the impact of pornography on families and children,” as CNET put it.
ICM Registry has attempted to counter such criticism by pointing out that the Internet already contains a plethora of adult content that isn’t helpfully grouped under one specific top-level domain, making it potentially easier to stumble upon. That said, there’s nothing forcing adult entertainment companies to only use “.xxx” domains, so it will likely provide just another avenue for such content, albeit a more designated and arguably safer one.
As ICM Registry explains in the following video promo, all .xxx addresses will be scanned daily by security firm McAfee and will receive a label from web software company MetaCert indicating to search engines and search engine users that the websites are explicit, adult-only content.
ICM Registry has also agreed to work with the nonprofit International Foundation for Online Responsibility, nor pirated to ensure no child pornography (nor pirated material) appears on .xxx domains.
Still such safety measures have done little to temper the controversy over the domain.
Other businesses outside of the adult industry, namely universities, have grumbled about being tacitly forced having to snap up “.xxx” domains to protect their brand names. Colleges across the United States and Canada, including Penn State, Northwestern, Illinois State University, Indiana University
But there’s another, entirely separate, business related criticism that’s come from a somewhat unlikely source: Established companies within the adult entertainment industry who have alleged that the scheme is tantamount to extortion. In fact, two online industry leaders, YouPorn and DigitalPlayground.com, in November sued ICM Registry for antitrust violations relating to the .xxx domain. That case is pending.
We’ve reached out to ICM Registry for more information on how it plans to handle the lawsuits, the criticisms and its newfound gold mine, and we’ll update when we receive a response.
